New direct train services from London to Wrexham and Rochdale rejected | Rail industry

Plans to run direct train services to Wrexham and Rochdale from London have been rejected by the rail regulator because of “significant pressure” on the line.

The Office of Rail and Road said that there was insufficient space on the crowded west coast mainline to introduce the two new separate train services.

It also vetoed plans for additional London-Blackpool train services wanted by Avanti.

The ORR had last year knocked back plans for a new independent open access service linking Wrexham and the capital put forward by the Wrexham, Shropshire & Midlands Railway Company (WSMR). WSMR had submitted plans for a slightly less frequent service but the ORR said the new routes would still put the reliability of the wider railway at risk.

The new service could have allowed Wrexham to capitalise further on the town’s Hollywood-meets-football mini-boom, fuelled by the Wrexham AFC co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

Proposals for a new Lumo service between London and Rochdale, again slimmed down after being rejected in 2025, were once more rebuffed.

The ORR also said Avanti could not add more Blackpool services from London. However, it did approve one extra London-Chester evening service from Avanti, which would otherwise have run as a “ghost train”, with crew and the rolling stock returning north to the depot overnight. The decision follows the outcry over the ORR’s initial ruling on a Manchester-London service which was barred from taking passengers last year.

The regulator said its assessment, backed by external reviews, was that the “capacity and performance of the southern section of the west coast mainline has not materially changed since similar applications were rejected in 2025”.

It said gaps in the current timetable were needed to provide important space for trains to recover when things went wrong, rather than escalating chaos.

Stephanie Tobyn, ORR’s director of strategy, policy and reform, said: “New services, destinations and greater choice can bring real benefits for passengers and communities. But the west coast mainline is already under significant pressure, with performance reflecting limited resilience on a heavily used part of the rail network.

“Our detailed analysis has shown that adding more trains to the current timetable would reduce the ability to recover when disruption occurs, increasing the risk of delays spreading and making reliability of the network worse for all passengers.”

Private operators such as First Group, owners of Lumo, have been looking to increase open-access routes – such as Hull Trains and Grand Central – as Labour has renationalised major rail contracts in the transition to Great British Railways.

London-Wrexham direct trains briefly ran from London Marylebone from 2008 to 2011 as an open-access service but stopped owing to financial losses.